The young man reached for the key. “Ready, sir.”

“NEED CELERE AND PRESTOGIACOMO INFORMATION SOONEST.”

Bell paused. The widely divergent opinions of Marco Celere held by Danielle Di Vecchio and Josephine Josephs Frost would raise interesting questions about any murder victim, but they were particularly interesting when the victim had disappeared.

“Is that it, sir? Shall I send it?”

“Continue: ‘PARTIAL STORY BETTER THAN NONE.’

“And then add: ‘ON THE JUMP.’

“In fact, add ‘ON THE JUMP’ twice.”

“There it is, sir. Shall I send it?”

Bell considered. If only it were possible to telephone long-distance all the way to San Francisco, he could query the usually reliable Dashwood as to what was taking him so long and impress upon him the urgency he felt.

“Add another ‘ON THE JUMP’!”

Chapter 14

14

“I HEAR THE WRIGHT BROTHERS started a flying school, Mr. Bell,” Andy Moser called from the front of the Eagle when Isaac Bell ordered him to spin the propeller to start the sleek machine.

“I don’t have time to go to Ohio. The race starts next week. Besides, how many teachers have driven flying machines for more than a year? Most aviators pick it up on their own, just like Josephine. Spin her over.”

It was a perfect day for flying, a sunny late-spring morning at Belmont Park with a light west wind. Andy and the mechanicians who Bell had hired to assist him had rolled the Eagle to a distant stretch of grass far from the main activity of the infield. They had chocked the wheels, and when they heard Bell order Andy to start the motor, they grabbed the chocks’ ropes and prepared to steady the machine as wing runners.

Bell was seated behind the wing, with his head, shoulders, and chest exposed. The motor was ahead of him—the safest place for it, Eddison-Sydney-Martin insisted, where it wouldn’t crush the driver in a smash. Ahead of the motor gleamed a nine-foot, two-bladed propeller of polished walnut—the most expensive place for it, Joe Mudd had noted. “If you come down hard on the nose, it’ll cost you a hundred bucks for a new one.”

Bell tilted the wheel post and watched the effect on the wings. Out at the tips, eighteen feet to his right and left, the alettoni hinged up and down. He looked back along the slim fuselage, whose booms and struts were covered in tightly drawn silk fabric to reduce drag, and turned the wheel. The rudder moved left and right. He pulled the wheel toward him. The elevators hinged to the horizontal tail keel tilted. In theory, when he did that in the air, the machine would go up.

“Spin her over!”

“A hundred fliers have died in accidents,” Andy reminded him for the third time that morning.

“More mountain climbers die falling off cliffs. Spin her over!”